55th Venice Biennale: Mr. Gioni's Gigantic Wunderkammer

Paolo Baratta, long-time Biennale president, chose Massimiliano Gioni (39), as the youngest curator for Biennale keynote show, because - as he put it - he likes to take risk. Mr. Gioni is certainly a bright curator, but I think for this show, his risk didn't pay off: For me the keynote show is too big, too arbitrary and too inconsistent to its own concept.

Luckily, there are still a number of great works, like Pawel Althammer's 'Venetians', in it and at the rest of the Venice Biennale: You can always rely on the swarm intelligence of the other curators of the 88 national pavilions and the collateral events. So, the trip to Venice is always worth it.

Mr. Gioni took the title 'Il Palazzo Eciclopedico' (The Encyclopedic Palace) from Maurino Auriti (1891 - 1980), who was an Italo-American self-thought less-known artist. In 1955, he filed a US patent for his vision of a museum designed to showcase the entire range of humanity’s achievements - from the wheel to the satellite. Mr. Auriti built a model, which is in the Biennale show on loan from the American Folk Museum. The museum was never built, as Maurino Auriti failed to find financial backing for his project.

55th Venice Biennale curator Massimiliano Gioni (c) PAS

'I am interested in artists who try to know and understand everything!' said Massimiliano Gioni in the opening press conference. He looked at various sources: From established artists, outsider art, Shaker drawings, drawings of Shaman of the Solomon Islands to the adolescent erotic visions out of Evgenij Kozlov' s Kommunalka.

He says, 'The works of these artists help illustrate a condition, we all share: We ourselves are media, channeling images, or at times even finding ourselves possessed by images. (...) How can we deny the talismanic power of an image, when we still carry pictures of our loved ones in our cell phones?'

O.K. I get his point - but why did I have to fight myself through art, artifacts and found objects of more than 150 artists to learn this lecture?

Gioni's Wunderkammer at the Arsenale (c) PAS

Mr. Gioni designed the show in the Arsenale as a progression from natural forms, to studies of the human body to the artifice of the digital age, loosely following the typical layout of 16th and 17th Century 'Wunderkammern' (cabinets of curiosities).

At the Arsenale I can follow his Encyclopedic Palace concept the least. For me the show is too big and too arbitrary and too inconsistent with its own concept. Often it gives me the feeling of an accumulation of curiosities. Other works are all too commercial.

From an institutional point of view, it is probably remarkable that a Venice Biennale curator, who is one of the key gatekeepers between the in- and outside of the International art world, invited so many outsider artists.